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Gourmet Burger Kitchen

Every Tuesday night my boyfriend and I have ‘date night’: dinner followed by our one of our resolutions for this year – ballroom and latin dance class [insert joke here].

Our classes are next to The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury, so for the past seven weeks we’ve be making our way around the high-street hangouts including Pizza Express, Yo! Sushi and Nandos (twice). Last week we finally made it to Gourmet Burger Kitchen (a.k.a. GBK).

Now it might surprise you that as a burger-lover, I didn’t make GBK the first restaurant we went to. Or some of you may be thinking, I saved the best till last. Well, if you’re thinking that, you’d be horribly mistaken. Because GBK is far from the best.

We walked in and instead of being greeted by a friendly face to show us to a table, we were met by a queue. And being the Brits that we are (despite us actually have little to no British blood in either of us) we quietly joined the back of the line. Naturally we assumed that this was a queue of people waiting to be shown to a table. We were wrong. After waiting for ten minutes (not so long in the grand scheme of things, but for burger joint with visibly empty tables available, it seemed rather unnecessary), we finally made it to the lady behind the counter. Her first question to us was, ‘What table number are you?’

After seeing the confused look on our faces, she quickly realised that we didn’t know, nor were we told that when you first walk into GBK you need to bag yourself a table and then head up to the counter to place your order. That being said, she kindly scrambled around to wipe down the surface of an empty table and then came back to take our order.

They had a lot of choice on the menu including the regulars: classic, cheese, mushroom, bacon; and the not so regulars: Kiwiburger (beetroot, egg, pineapple, cheese, mayo), Camemburger (camembert, hash brown, bacon, jam) and The Taxidriver (onion ring, relish, chilli mayo, dill pickle).

Not feeling particularly confident in the combination of some of these ingredients, I opted for a simple, yet somewhat exotic Blue Cheese burger: beef patty, house mayo, relish, salad and a slice of Gorgonzola.

The food arrived and the first thing I saw were the fries. They were, er, how do I say this? Super skinny. Like Kate Moss.Unfortunately in the picture they look like regular chips, but in reality, they were like Potato Sticks. I even heard the girl on the table next to us say, ‘oh wow, those are really skinny.’ So, the chip sticks had already put a bad taste in my mouth.

My Blue Cheese burger was alright. The Gorgonzola made it. The bread was that packeted sesame bread (which I’ve come to dislike), and other than the cheese, one lettuce leaf and a slice tomato, there was nothing much else to it. Not sauces, no relish, nada.

When I was eating it I thought to myself, this tastes like a burger that I could have made at home. And I am not a good cook!

Sadly my side salad did not offer a refreshing respite. It was covered in a sweet, sticky sauce. Disgusting.

I took a bite of The Don, and now when it comes to recalling the taste of it, I can’t. So I’ve had called on my boyfriend’s memory and tastebuds to describe this one: ‘the meat wasn’t very good quality and the bun was boring.’ Well, I just need to look at the picture to see that.